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Shortlisted News & Views

News & Views

News & Views is published monthly by 180 Systems. Our objective is to provide recent articles to our readers on business technology topics. In some cases, our blog contains a title with a hyperlink to a source article, a quote from the article and our comments. In other cases, we have provided a blog without a hyperlink for original content by 180 Systems. We encourage you to post your own comments. You can also access our blog by topic.

2011 from ProjectTimes – “…What is a successful ERP Implementation and how do we measure whether it was successful or not…”

180 View – The article brings up a great subject but misses the mark in how to define success. The article discusses success in terms of scope, timing, budget with the bottom line that the client is pleased. Clearly all of these are important but we think not enough. We believe that the project should start with a definition of critical success factors (what an organization must do well in order to be successful) and the measurements of success or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in attaining CSFs. There should be KPI goals for an ERP implementation, and only when these are met is it time to break out the champagne.

March 10, 2011 from BusinessFinance – “Here are some pretty startling figures for 2010 from Panorama’s cross-industry sample of ERP adopters of various sizes. The percentage of ERP implementations in which:

The effort took longer than expected — 61 percent

Cost exceeded budget — 74 percent

Benefits realized were less than 50% of those expected — 48 percent…

ERP projects are fairly complicated and involve considerable risks. They may very possibly go awry, bringing in other issues like going over-budget, having to pay overtime, and so on, which will lead to low benefits realization…”

180 View – It is not surprising that ERP projects take longer and cost more than expected. However the benefits failure should not be linked to “going over-budget, having to pay overtime, and so on”. The benefits should be linked to the measurements of success or Key Performance Indicators that should have been identified at the beginning of the project. It is a gross overstatement that tons of ERP projects still bomb. ERP runs the business processes of any sized company and if tons of them are bombing, one would expect tons of companies to go out of business because of ERP, which is not the case. This reminds me of the rhetoric of the Y2K consultants who reaped the benefits of companies ready to do anything to avoid the anticipated disaster.

March 23, 2011 from InformationWeek – “Can software licensing get any more ridiculous? My company recently concluded a $900,000 software purchase, after reviewing the products of three major vendors… I understand that our software vendors must earn returns that support continued investment and innovation. But how much time and effort would be saved by both parties with simpler, more transparent licensing methods? It’s time for a change.”

180 View – We too have seen a wide variety of pricing models making it difficult to compare costs by vendors. Don’t wait until a decision is made to know the fine print.

July 21, 2010 from Modern Materials Handling – “…We began by looking at the top providers of warehouse management systems (WMS), but our focus has evolved… While the lines between supply chain execution and supply chain planning providers were once clearly drawn, that is no longer the case; ERP providers supply WMS, and supply chain execution providers supply planning and optimization solutions.

180 View – Don’t you love the 3 letter acronyms – ERP, WMS, SCM…? Some of the higher-end ERP systems include WMS and SCM, but when it comes to supply chain planning and optimization, you will likely require a best of breed option with one of the SCM vendors that specialize in that market.